For the penultimate concert in the Spotlight Chamber Music Series, the Kantos String Quartet – Sarah Sew and Hugh Murray (Violins), Alexandros Koustas (Viola) and Aoife Burke (Cello) – present the second of Swan Hennessy’s four string quartets, and are joined by the celebrated pianist Michael McHale for Brahms’ monumental Piano Quintet.

The Irish-American composer Swan Hennessy wrote his second string quartet in memory of Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, shortly after MacSwiney’s death on hunger strike in Brixton Prison in 1920. The work was premiered by four Dublin-based musicians – Arthur Darley and Terry O’Connor (Violins), George H. Brett (Viola) and Joseph Schofield (Cello) – at the World Congress of the Irish Race in Paris on the evening of the 25th of January 1922, to an audience including Éamon de Valera, Countess Markievicz and Mary MacSwiney (sister of Terence). It is one of the very few works of classical music that was written in direct response to the revolutionary events of just over a century ago. The Paris correspondent of the New York Herald present at the work’s premiere, wrote … “[It] begins slowly and sadly in a manner suggestive of the patriot’s long self-imposed martyrdom. His gradual weakening and final death are indicated by a subtle progressive change of rhythmic values. In the three movements which follow the effort is to glorify Ireland, and both the more sombre and the gayer sides of the Celtic genius are indicated. There is a clever counterfeiting of the notes of the bagpipe, the occasional introduction of a bright theme from the popular ballads. The triumphant finale acclaims the glorious future of the new Ireland.” This will be followed by Brahms’ Piano Quintet, undoubtedly one of the composer’s finest and most substantial chamber works. Initially scored as a string quintet with two cellos, then reimagined as a two piano sonata, it was finally cast in its familiar form on the advice of Clara Schumann née Wieck and Joseph Joachim. Hermann Levi, another eminent musician of the time who was a close friend of the composer, wrote in a letter to Brahms: “The Quintet is beautiful beyond words. Anyone who did not know it in its earlier forms of string quintet and two-piano sonata would never believe that it was not originally thought out and designed for the present combination of instruments… You have turned a monotonous work for two pianos into a thing of great beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music…”

Musicians:

Sarah Sew and Hugh Murray – Violins
Alexandros Koustas – Viola
Aoife Burke – Cello
Michael McHale – Piano

Programme:

Swan Hennessy: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 49
Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34

About the Musicians

Sarah Sew is recipient of the Maisie Lewis Young Artists’ Fund Award which supported her recital debut at the Wigmore Hall, the Emanuel Hurwitz Award for an outstanding UK violinist and the J & A Beare Prize. As a recitalist and chamber musician, she has performed at Zermatt Festival, Switzerland; Bolzano Festival, Italy; Grafenegg Festival, Austria; Cheltenham Festival, UK; and the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove. Sarah is Professor of Violin and Head of Chamber Music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where she founded ChamberFest Dublin which is now in its seventh year. Sarah is Leader of the Irish National Opera Orchestra and has appeared as Guest Leader of the National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, English Symphony Orchestra, Balkan Chamber Orchestra, and the Human Rights Orchestra in Lucerne, amongst others. Previous positions include Concertmaster of the European Union Youth Orchestra and Principal First Violin of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Sarah studied with Maurice Hasson and Howard Davis at the Royal Academy of Music in London and Friedemann Eichhorn at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, Germany. In 2018, she was awarded Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. She appears frequently on competition juries and returned to Weimar in 2022 as a jury member for the International Louis Spohr Competition. Sarah plays an Italian violin by Gennaro Gagliano c.1760.

Hugh Murray lives and works in Dublin as a member of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. He has also enjoyed appearances with the John Wilson Orchestra, Sinfonia of London and Irish National Opera. Hugh has also been heard as the violinist on the UK touring shows Les Misérables and Book of Mormon.

He is a keen chamber musician, taking part in National String Quartet Foundation tours, and performing regularly with the Picorlino Trio. Hugh is on the string faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and also enjoys tutoring chamber music on Concorda each summer.

Alexandros Koustas was recently appointed as Principal Violist of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. He is also Principal Violist of the English National Ballet Philharmonic and a member of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Alexandros studied the violin and viola at the Royal Academy of Music, and during his studies was awarded both of the institution’s viola prizes. In 2009 he was a resident artist in the Banff Centre, Canada, where he performed as a soloist and chamber musician. He was also a prize winner in the 2006 Lionel Tertis Viola Competition. He has appeared as a guest principal with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the CBSO, LPO, BSO, and other ensembles. In 2020, Alexandros recorded the Skalkottas Concerto for Violin, Viola and Wind Orchestra with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Selected by The Arts Council as a recipient of a Next Generation Artist Bursary 2020, cellist Aoife Burke leads a diverse career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, curator and producer.

An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with notable artists including Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Arto Noras and Richard Watkins, and groups such as The Vanbrugh, Navarra Quartet, ConTempo Quartet and the Gavin Bryars, Kirkos, Ficino and Crash Ensembles. Her love for chamber music was fostered, in tandem with many other influences, on the masterclass scheme at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and during a Chamber Studio mentorship with Richard Lester at King’s Place, London. Aoife has also appeared as soloist with orchestra several times both at home and abroad. Her début with the New York Concerti Sinfonietta in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2016 was described as “a thing of beauty…intelligent, poised, and refined”. (The Epoch Times)

Aoife studied at undergraduate level with Emma Ferrand at the RNCM in Manchester, and with Christoph Richter and Andreas Reiner at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, Germany, graduating in 2014 with a first-class BMus. (Hons.). During the course of her studies, Aoife won the Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship and partook in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. She subsequently obtained a Master’s Degree in Arts with Distinction from the CIT Cork School of Music, where she studied under Christopher Marwood, and pursued further study on the Performance Certificate Course (Corso di Perfezionamento) at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, Italy, with Paolo Bonomini and Francesco Dillon. As a session musician, she has recorded for Sinéad O’Connor, U2, The Police, Ed Sheeran and Van Morrison, among many others.

Belfast-born Michael McHale has established himself as one of Ireland’s leading pianists and has developed a busy international career as a solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician.

He has performed and recorded with the Minnesota and Hallé Orchestras, the Moscow, Bournemouth, Jacksonville, Fort Smith, BBC, BBC Scottish and London Symphony Orchestras, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and all five of the major Irish orchestras, and performed on major international stages including the BBC Proms, Tanglewood and Tokyo Spring Festivals, Wigmore, Cadogan and Barbican Halls in London, Berlin Konzerthaus, Lincoln and Kennedy Centers, Symphony Hall, Boston and Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

Michael’s discography of over twenty-five albums includes releases on BIS, Delos, Champs Hill, Ergodos and RTÉ lyric fm, as well as acclaimed recordings on Chandos of the Strauss Burleske and Richard Rodney Bennett’s Piano Concerto. The début album of the McGill/McHale Trio ‘Portraits’ on Cedille featuring narrations by Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali was released in 2017 and immediately entered the Top 25 US Billboard Classical Chart. His regular chamber music partners include Michael Collins, Sir James Galway, Camerata Pacifica, Wigmore Soloists and The Vanbrugh.

After completing studies at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, Michael went on to win the Camerata Ireland Accenture Award, Brennan and Field Prizes at the Dublin International Piano Competition, Terence Judd/Hallé Award and a Major Individual Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. His teachers and mentors include John O’Conor, Réamonn Keary, Christopher Elton, Ronan O’Hora and Barry Douglas.

Michael has given masterclasses at Catholic University, Washington DC, Montclair University, NJ, Southern University, IL, Bowling Green University, OH, Trinity College, Dublin, Royal Irish Academy of Music and for other organisations including the Ulster Orchestra, Moving on Music and the Royal Tunbridge Wells International Music Festival.